


soft as a lion tamed

by ghostlypng



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: An unusual type of angst, Anxiety, Barely but tagged to safe, Bittersweet, Depression, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Keith and Lance are roommates, M/M, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Online Romance, Sexual Content, Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2018-12-01 01:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11475432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlypng/pseuds/ghostlypng
Summary: Keith has agoraphobia. Shiro has PTSD. They meet in an online therapy group and fall infatuatedly in love hundreds of miles apart.





	1. on the verge of being

**Author's Note:**

> “later that night  
> i held an atlas in my lap  
> ran my fingers across the whole world  
> and whispered  
> where does it hurt?
> 
> it answered  
> everywhere  
> everywhere  
> everywhere.”  
> ― Warsan Shire,

5 AM begins the echo of doors slamming down the hallway. A signal of the rise of the first wave of morning people just outside of Keith’s apartment door. He wonders what it would be like to join them in their mass movement to work or school or whatever place their morning travels will take them. The only place Keith has plans to be though is his bed.

At some point, he can’t remember the exact moment of, his days turned on end and sent him into a habit of being nocturnal. A schedule that runs parallel to the rest of the world surrounding him. Being parallel wasn’t new though.

Agoraphobia; An anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives the environment to be unsafe with no easy way to get away.

That’s how doctors had described to social workers. Clinical and exact.

If anyone had asked Keith, he’d have told them it was just another card telling him to draw four in some messed up life or death version of Uno. They didn’t ask though. Only tried to coax the answer of where his dad might be at out of him. An answer Keith didn’t have. More useless cards in his already full hands.

He wasn’t always alone, even when he was. Online chat rooms and blog writing kept him stable enough. Yet sometimes.. Even that smallest amount of human interaction had him wishing for a life that was even quieter. An ear canal shoved full of anything enough to burst the eardrum into a forever of silence.

“I don’t like crowds.” Was the excuse some days. Others it might be “I hate loud noises.” or “People annoy me.” They were all true as much as they were just a grain of rice in the bucket of Keith’s struggles.

College courses could be completed online even with pesky project partners saying “You should get some help dude.” over group skype calls that left only Keith in the dark. The only faceless profile still unlit.

Help meant therapy which meant therapists or psychologists which felt only like people ready to peel him apart. Layer by layer till there was nothing of Keith left but his exposed pain. Hot like a metal prong taping hard at the electric fence he’d staked in around himself. And yet..  
Swallowing dark, cold water into your lungs seemed like such a pathetic way to die. Keith imagined blacking out first and then slowly fading into a particle of the ocean. Keith wanted to burn.

\--

Coating his hand with saliva didn’t do a thing to smooth the rough texture of Keith’s callused palm. His dick was barely half-hard even after forty-five minutes of trying to tease and coax his head into feeling it. He grumbled under his breath, a composite of small muffled noise without meaning and gave up.It had just been a way to waste time and relax but now he just felt angry. The limited quality of his imagination had left him with a half-baked outline of a man that had started as his best friend Lance then morphed into someone bigger. Someone capable of soaking up calm silence instead of feeling a need to shout it away. The hollow part in his chest dipped down further, stomach touching spine, and leaving him more than just a mite annoyed and too warm in his bedroom. He shucked his socks and cranked his airconditioner up another couple notches.

_Yeah_. Keith wrapped himself in thoughts like an old wool blanket. Suffocating in it’s scratchy heat. _As if that would happen_.

“Dude!” A clatter outside his door wakes Keith.

“Shut up Lance!” He calls back, not even sure how loud he’s being with sleep still easing back from his head.

“No way! You’ve been in there all day and don’t think I don’t know!!” Lance doesn’t even clarify what all he does know. It could’ve been something to do with the way Keith’s stomach gurgled with basic need or an allusion to the constant lack of movement Keith made during an average day. He’d been as lazy as ever, sleeping sprawled out in bed and blessedly and absolutely unaware of the day’s hours ticking by in a slow paced crawl.

It’s with feet that stomp like they’re encased in hard cement that Keith makes his way to wash away a cryptid-worthy crust of sleep and sweat in a shower that’s not quite turned up to qualify as luke-warm. Mentally, he thanks Lance for at least giving him a chance to pull himself somewhat together with clean clothes and a mouthful of food before bombarding him with an endless stream of chatter he only pays partial attention to. He’s more entranced with filling his belly and catching up with a mass amount of social media notifications that are currently the most validating part of his radioactive half-life of an existence. It’s the sound of his name rolling out of Lance’s mouth that knocks his brain out of his phone and back into the atmosphere.

“Eh?” Keith tries not to be completely disgusting, keeping his mouth covered with it’s half-chewed bite still being processed by teeth and tongue.

“I asked if you looked into the thing the pretty TA was telling me about.” Lance’s eyeball twitches, head stuck out at the neck like a posturing turkey. It’s forced and fake to exaggerate how annoyed he’s feeling at Keith in that second.

“Not really..” It’s a lie. Dirt to keep the coffin full of shame covered. If only Lance didn’t know him too well for it to be more than dirty water splashed over the top. He’s just grateful Lance isn’t a pusher. Toes dangling over the edge of a skyscraper, the last thing the person standing there needed was a firm shove.  
Group Therapy but online. Lance had suggested it days ago and just like each night he’d been awake since, Keith was staring at the “K. Kogane. Twenty. Mild anxiety.” that made up the bare and only bones of his still unpublished profile. Growling, berating himself for his cowardly lion performance he clicked the submit button hard enough to wince in apology at the hard crunch his mouse button made.

“Fuck!” He yelled at the wall that kept him from having to ever look into Lance’s room. He hoped the sound, and the clunk of his knee knocking the underside of his desk disturbed Lance’s “beauty” sleep. He hoped Lance didn’t even stir as Keith sucked in an uncomfortable breath and minimised the browser to hide the mammoth in the ice with its first bit of fur uncovered under the heat equivalent of a hairdryer.

Days slide by like spoonfuls of thick, faux flavoured and too-sweet cough medicine rolling past the tongue and down the throat leaving an urge to gag and be ill. Keith swallows it all down, losing track of the number of hours that are stirred into the mix. He browses posts and profiles on the website as if the endless stream of irrelevant words pertaining to issues with no relevance to his own will bring him to a roundabout realisation. He doesn’t find himself enveloped in a sudden divine gift of clarity. He does find words that feel like some sort of emotion mirror. His own reflection looking back at him from the glass topped dining table his parents had kept from the seventies.

“I was jealous because I thought I couldn’t compare,” Keith mouths along with the story. A stranger's words fitting into his mouth like he’d formed them with his own teeth and tongue first. Curious flames curl and lick around the paper of his curiousity.

_T. Shirogane. Twenty-five years old, Aerospace Engineer and avid_ _reader. Currently attending both physical and online group therapy for Post-trauma induced anxiety._

The profile reads to Keith more like a bad profile on a dating app by someone who’s too smart yet pathetic to score a date without the help of having the digital age on their side. It doesn’t stop Keith from peeling skin back from the nailbed of his thumb, debating over the red pinprick of blood if anonymous feedback is only just for the true worthless worms of the Earth’s crust. His guts swallow themselves like an ouroboros after it’s own tail in a false sense of infinity and completion. His finger hovers over the detonator, sweat making his hair heavy and sticky on his forehead from more than just late evening heat. He hits send and prays that if there is any justice, the world will not end.

T. Shirogane waits to give thanks to his anonymous appreciation at least a day. The word “anxiety” on both their profiles flashes yellow as if it is the caution light at a four way stop with lights that provide more decoration than practical function. There is no true stop or go, just the law of courtesy street racers ignore in a single track mind to win. Group Application Submitted. Loops in Keith’s thoughts reminiscent of the time Lance had made him a mix CD of the same song repeating itself fifty times. Keith still had it held up on his wall with pushpins.

Infatuation seems too shallow. Enthralled sounds too much like Keith’s a mindless creature being swallowed by T. Shirogane’s mouth every time it opens in the group sessions.

“And then I after I dropped my cup, I started crying a little bit because he really squeezed the damaged nerves when he grabbed onto my wrist. It was pretty humiliating feeling.” Shiro admits into his microphone. “Good grip though.” He does his best to laugh off the epilogue of his embarrassment. Keith nods like he understands because he does. The grainy image his cheap webcam offers only catches a small part of his contained movement. It’s been a week but he already feels a staunch in the constants of his inner hemorrhaging.

“Yeah..” The words seem to curl from his mouth, vines blooming out vibrant, soft petaled flowers. “I stepped on a bag in the living room last week by mistake. My roommate saw me break out into tears when it popped.” His eyes burn angry, fingers digging into the leg of his jeans with the recollection of Lance’s fake laugh and soothing hand on his back to soothe away the shame. Shiro nodded, understanding from a different angle than Lance ever could.

“That’s rough buddy.” Shiro offered to Keith, a voice prioritized over others. Keith wished, again, Shiro would keep talking instead of the takeover of their group leaders voice offering up ideas on “processing” thoughts and feelings. The type of advice that served Keith about as well as a dull knife could cut. At least that was how he felt about it.

His pain was not a garden he wanted to continually stroll through. He wanted to be good and whole again and he wanted it to be faster than the two-and-a-half minutes his high sodium meal had left in the microwave. Lance found him that way, staring into a dark kitchen appliance with empty eyes and cold noodles on the other side of the machine’s plastic door, and sent him to bed.

Keith stared at the ceiling in bed. Picturing again, someone to hold him and offer up sweet words to his temple like reverent prayer. _That’s rough buddy_. He chewed it like gristle till sleep took him.


	2. don't fabricate it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith goes for a drive.  
> Sheith phone sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: there are more heavy visuals and sad stuff bc i'm self indulgent af  
> also i wanna point out that their relationship isn't healthy ok? ok.

There aren’t many places Keith feels he can go. Coffee shops and grocery stores hold an uncountable number of eyes that hold judgment over each and every decision he makes. A tumbling swirl of thoughts and opinions that roll him around like coloured beads in the tube of a kaleidoscope. Too bright, too harsh in the crackled viewfinder at the end opposite of his eye. He lies in the rear floorboard of Lance’s car despite the heat that makes his hair stick and curl from the sweat inducing heat of summer’s warmth radiating from the blacktop parking lot pavement. The promise of air conditioning just beyond a double set of automatic doors is tempting yet he lays there, phone clutched tight, waiting, hoping for no one to walk by and question his status as living.

“Hey”

“Hey you :)”

Shiro’s answering text makes his heartbeat pick up. The fast click-click-click of a roller coaster dropping down the first rise. The unshredded parts of his fingernails suffering the brunt and joining the rest in misery. Shiro is faster in keeping the conversation going while Keith abuses his nails and hair in a desperate fit of stimming.

“Doing anything interesting?”

Do I ever? Keith fakes that he’s human and interesting. Complains about the heat and the long line in the grocery store he is imagining because Why else would Lance take so long to buy fucking ice cream and soda? It’s probably an answer with two legs and a pretty face. Lance’s favorite flavour of anything. It lets Keith get away with a lot harder strikes with his fist in a game of punch-buggy on the ride home. The revenge hits and slimy coating of High Fructose Corn Syrup on his teeth put him in a forgiving mood. His replies to Shiro almost even border witty till the conversation is dropped so he can fill his hands with as many weighted plastic bags as he can carry in a single trip.

“Don’t break the eggs!” Lance flutters and frets, a skinny legged bird himself.

“I won’t, jeez!” Two is plural but not the entire carton. Two also happens to be just the right number for a boxed brownie mix anyway. Fudge gooey warm but not melting the way Keith is. Sticky, oozing affection foaming fast from some undiscovered part of himself at the way Shiro calls him cute and offers to rub his stomach, padded full of junk food and sweets.

“A cheat day?” Shiro asks it.

“Yeah.” It’s not a lie if it’s true that every day could be called a cheat day.

Keith thinks life must pick back up for Shiro. There is more empty space to measure in the unsynced ticking of his three bedroom clocks. Most nights the mechanical rotations provide an odd sort of white noise that moves Keith’s mind to foreign places where maybe the clocks time would be accurate. A result of letting the batteries die and putting off finding replacements until the smog clears enough from his grey matter so that he can remember to grant a new life to the instruments. The never ending tapping of gears winding around and around does little to soothe the screaming need that draws his blood out of his head, vampiric in the nightly craving it seeks to satisfy.

No, Keith can’t do coffee shops or dingy diners smelling of old grease and the brain pain of hanging fluorescent lights. The early hours carry his feet to a place of solace, unintentionally a gift from his latchkey creationist of a father. His old jeep is the only confessional he needs. The road his religion and night sky more beautiful than any ceiling painted with dreamy clouds and idealized angels with blue-eyes.

Instrumental music fights the loud rushing vibrations of the wind as Keith drives down winding roads, lineless and faded. The heat of the South is just right at that time of night to keep the air a pleasant caress of warmth as he passes through, mighty corn fields high on one side of the road. Leafy bean fields on the other, stretching as far as he can see to where headlights can’t reach. The grace of the soil is a weakness, lifting them high only to be cut down for consumption later. Bitterly, Keith thinks of how he would not hesitate to be one cutting them down.

The pavement turns to gravel as a turn takes him up the driveway of an old, bent and rusted mobile home. It's front a graveyard of broken down vehicles, overgrown with wild wheat, weeds, and tall grass that more than likely hold an unknowable number of snakes.

He remembers a time when it held laughter on the tire swing of a tree that’d died and had its branches severed one by one, then cut down into blocks for burning or mulch or whatever happened to old trees that rotted from the inside out. The cracks in the window his mother had favorite best for its unabashed view of the morning sun mock him. Memories of her Keith can only pretend to know from the stories his uncle had offered after his mother had turned to ash to rejoin the earth and his dad turned to wet, misty tears. His uncle had taken it hard just as much as Keith had. He’d poured his vexation into outward fixation, while Keith folded in on himself like a thousand crumpled origami swans. Destruction of a dream.

“Hey, you up? I just need someone to talk to.” It’s past one in the morning and Keith has no faith that Shiro will break apart the clouds and bring light to his phone screen with a reply but it rings. Vibrate buzzing against the seat over the clacking his engine makes as it cools.

“Hello?” It’s a whisper of a greeting.

“Everything okay Keith?” If sorrow was an addiction and therapy was recovery, then Shiro was without a doubt Keith’s sponsor.

“I don’t know.” It’s the way Shiro treats him, careful consideration, that hooks the honesty out of him. A pull before giving slack to prevent a fight that could cause the transparent line to snap like weak thread. “I took a late night drive and I guess I was kinda feeling lonely.”

“Ah..” There’s a rustle of sheets as Shiro sits up in bed on the other side of the country, two-thirty only half past midnight. “I wish I was there to give you a hug or something Keith.” Keith wishes it too. With all his heart and a sob.

“It’s okay I just. Sometimes it’s so overwhelming and.. Fuck!” Keith screams it the first time away from the phone, fist hitting the top of his thigh to beat the pain into submission. The second time he says it as a whisper into the phone. “Fuck.. I miss her so much and it’s like I never get to have anything good for myself. I just want to not feel like I’m hurtling alone on this dumb stupid planet.”

Shiro draws in a sharp breath, recognizing the swallowing darkness that the black hole a loss leaves behind. “Keith you’re not alone, okay? I’m always here if you need to talk. It’s..” Shiro swallows and the turn of an axis takes place. “I love talking to you. It’s pretty much the best part of my day.”

“Oh.” Keith dirties his sleeve with leaking salt water and snot.

“Yeah..” Shiro follows it up with a shy chuckle. It’s the best thing Keith’s heard.

“I’m glad. I mean, I love talking to you too. Plus. Y’know..”

“Know what?”

“You’re uh, good looking Shiro. Sorry if that’s weird.”

“No, it’s good Keith.”

“How good?” It comes out a rush of syllables, hurried before Keith loses the tremor of his vulnerable high.

“I think.. You too.” Shiro stumbles over himself, so aware of how he’s on the phone after midnight, barely dress and between the sheets. “You’re pretty Keith.”

  
“Pretty Keith huh?” It’s a tease. The slide of silk over eyes. A tongue in cheek taunt.

“I mean handsome. Like. You’re good looking too.” Magma rises up through volcanic pipelines in the conversation, the dangerous yet delicate start of precious gemstones forming to be mined.

“I,” Keith breathes out, hovering so carefully at the edge of a glass sea. “Wish you were here right now.”

“I’m always here for you.” Shiro holds his breath at the other end of the sea, afraid of fogging up the glass. Keith swallows a mouthful of the waking world.

“I mean here. Right now.” There is a pause to the chirping crickets and the visual calls of lightning bugs. “With me.”

“Me too.” Shiro says it again. Quieter. A sound softer than the anxious ringing in Keith’s ears. “I’m glad I found you. That you sent me that message after group one day.”

For Shiro, it’s the first but for Keith, it’s only the first of letting himself be front and visible without mask and cloak covering.

“Me too,” Keith says it this time. They are two halves of a broken record, melting together, wax lines being re-pressed into the plastic to create something playable and new. A perfect metronome of heartbeats in gravity defying suspense. “Shiro..”

“Yes, Keith?” Shiro makes his one syllable name full to bursting. Fresh orange peel, showering citrus oil out in a mist. The fragrant anticipation before the first bite of pulp and juice running down over lips, chin, and fingers in a sticky mess.

“If you were here would you kiss me?”

“If you’d let me.”

“I’d let you if I knew you really meant it.”

“Every time.”

  
“So you’d plan to do it more than once.”

“It’s called making-out Keith. People who like each other do it sometimes.” Keith can picture Shiro’s grin perfectly enough that if he wanted to he could count how many teeth the man would be showing behind upturned lips.

“Yeah well maybe I wouldn’t make out with you.”

“No?”

“It’s not like you would fit in my lap here in my truck Shiro.” The matter of fact tone makes Shiro start laughing, Keith finds himself grinning in victory. A trophy of gold held in each inhale and exhale of Shiro’s happiness.

“Well how about the backseat? I bet if I hunched, we could make it work.” The image of Shiro, shoulders pressed uncomfortably between the back of front seats and front of back seats puts Keith’s insides to a low-medium simmer. “Since you wanna see me on top so bad.”

“You can’t tell me that you don’t think you’re hot.” Shiro’s hesitance in giving an answer is all Keith needs to light a candle to melt and wax poetic. “I’d show you if I was there. Prove it to you. I don’t care if your hand can’t really feel much or if you drop things. I still want your fingers in my mouth.”

“Wow Keith. That’s a lot.”

“Sorry.” He’s only sorry Shiro is finding it too much to hold in the functioning equivalent of one and a half hands.

“No, don’t be. It’s good. I like it. I.. Like the way you look at me.” Eyes unafraid, heart unchained to the standard of ideal perfection and soulmates fitting like a puzzle of two flat pieces. “You can keep going if you want.”

“What about you though?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I had my mouth around your fingers. What would you do?” Keith slides on glass words. “Besides watch obviously.”

“Keith..” Shiro groans, letting him know they’re on the same page. Catching up to be on the same letter of the same word of a fresh paragraph. “I’d let you do it. I wouldn’t stop you.”

“No,” Keith drops the word heavy like a log on the fire, spraying up embers around the conversation. “What would you do Shiro. Tell me.”

“I’d..” Keith waits for the spars to find kindling. To set the whole of the field aflame. “I’d tell you how good you looked with your mouth full. Ask you to keep going and making a mess of your face with spit.” The idea sounds disgusting and unsanitary to Keith but he doesn’t stop Shiro from continuing.

“I bet you’d look really cute like that. The way your hair kinda curls around your cheek but with the rest of it spread out with you under me.”

“It gets curlier when it’s humid.” Keith interrupts. “When I get sweaty and hot.” Shiro takes the nervous admission as an incentive.

“Cute.” Shiro’s voice comes to him warm, the purr of a tamed lion still threat enough that Keith knows he could be devoured by it. The threat of teeth gnawing to the bone only excites him.  
  
“Is it weird if I touch myself?”

“No.” Another of Shiro’s laughs. “I have been.”

“What, wait, seriously?” How could Keith have missed the shift in Shiro’s voice. The sound had gone from warm to heated, trapped in a room full of smoke leaving behind a rough emission from desire. “Why didn’t you say something.” _Or ask._ Keith goes slow with pulling down the zipper of his jeans. Rubs up and down the full line of his own crotch over his boxers.

“Thought you already were when we started talking about having my fingers in your mouth and getting me in your lap. Is it not okay?”

“No, no it’s fine. Keep going.” Keith rushes to keep the spiraling cracks of his glass sea from spreading further. From going too far, too fast out of his control.

“Fuck, okay, yeah. That’s good. You’re good. I was wondering if I was being too obvious with the way I can’t stop looking at you when we’re in group video sessions. It’s hard not to get jealous when someone else makes you smile but I can’t be mad. It’s too cute.” The words soak into Keith, warm soapy water softening rough natural sponge. “Just made me wanna try harder for you baby boy.”

Keith whimpers into the phone’s mic, fingers swiping over the head of his dick.

“If I had you under me right now I’d make you get off first. I hope it’s not bad that I wanna see the face you make. I’d wanna know how far down you blush when you come. Think you can come for me now Keith? Show me a little bit of what it’s like for you. Please.”

It’s a call and Keith answers, speeding up his hand on his dick. _He asked you to finish. Come on you slut just fucking.. Do it.._

“Let me hear it, baby. I know you can be a good boy.”

“Ah.. Fuck..” Jizz splatters on Keith’s shirt and jeans, his hand still moving till his nerves cry tender while his thigh muscles twitch in overtaxed protest. “Hahh…” He slows with an exhale of a laugh.

“Mm, yeah that was good. Really good.” Shiro’s voice falls back to being warmed floorboards under cold resting feet.

“You too?” Keith pants out.

“Mm nah.” The words lay under a blanket, sleep taking over Shiro’s body. “Just wanted to get you off.. Was really hot.”

“Oh..” Keith digs for leftover paper napkins in the floorboard of the front passenger side. “You sure you don’t want me to get you off too?”

There is only silence. Keith watches the call’s timer climb for a bit in the seat beside him while he does his best to wipe his shirt from wet to just damp. There’s no voice on the other end while Keith makes the drive home. He hangs up once the car is again in Park. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys give me such good comments <3  
> (especially the DS squad.. tysm... lov you guys)


	3. my hands, your hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Shiro have a serious talk and make plans for their next step

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”  
> \- Frida Kahlo

“So you’re Japanese?”

“Japanese-American, yeah. My parents were immigrants. My father is a college professor and my mother cooks a lot.” Shiro laughs warm and deep.

Keith silently marvels at the similarities in their lives. He thanks ancient Greece for its myths of persons split into two halves and aches for Shiro to be the half coming whole for him.

“My dad taught at a university too. Some stuff about dirt and dead shit. What about your dad?”

Shiro laughs a little harder, picturing a Keith that’s young and elbow deep in dusty mineral rich soil. “He teaches rocket science.”

“Fitting. No wonder you’re such a space nerd.”

“And your mother?”

“My mom?” The question reverberates down a dark cave Keith only traverses when mining for diamonds of memories about the woman who gave birth to him. “She was Asian. She owned some really long fancy chopsticks. My dad told me once they were a gift from her parents before she moved with my dad to the U.S.”

“Oh yeah? Were they for cooking or just decorative?” The question hurts like slow-pulled tape taking a memento of hair and skin with it.

“Dunno. Dad never said. And he was a bad cook.”

“Oh.” The humor goes out of the conversation like a strand of Christmas lights with one faulty bulb that prevents the rest from continuing to glow.

“Keith I’m sorry. I know it must have been hard for you.” Shiro tries. Attempts to put a foot in the door before Keith can shut Shiro in a room alone and strand himself outside in empty vastness. Even with the speed of sound, it’s too late and thunders only after the crackle of a lightning strike.

“It wasn’t. I barely remember her. It’s not like I can miss what I don’t know. If that makes sense.”

Shiro’s heart curls like wet paper, internal expression for pain he can’t ease. Pain of Keith’s that he, for once in their short lifetime of together, does not understand.

“Yes. It does.” Sorrow slides slick as phlegm down. Down his throat, settling into his lungs and choking him. He feels as though he can sense parts of Keith, just past reach, lock itself away. Hates the way he finds himself again lacking in strength to hold anything for long enough to make it count.

Their conversation lulls and fades to background noises of Keith’s fan humming loudly and cars passing by on the street below Shiro’s bedroom window. Keith hangs up after a time on the assumption Shiro has fallen asleep. He follows it up with a sweet good night text that makes Shiro feel stir-crazy in his own skin.

A dot wells up out of the pinprick hole in Shiro’s skin. Shiny ruby blood welling up till the perfect circle breaks and runs down over new pink, pink skin that’s been exposed too soon from its protective scab.

A spot so small means little to Shiro who sees himself as tree that’s become gnarled more and more over time. He wipes the spot, stubbornly refusing to allow a scab to form and smearing burgundy stripes down his thumb. It does eventually cease, leaving a muddy looking crust from nail bed to joint. He tries to be like Keith thinks. Yet, peaceful rest doesn’t come.

An earlier riser than Keith, Shiro sends the first message of the day. A simple greeting of the words “good” and “morning” yet only one is an accurate description for it from his current view. A thought like a viewfinder aimed right into the depths of choppy sea waters that comprise his chronic pain. A burning tingle of muscle cream reminds him of his mother with its peppermint smell. It’s reminiscent of chalky clove mints coupled with hard church pews every Sunday morning throughout his childhood. He’d given up on that type of god years ago but certain things stayed with a person, like the ringing of hundreds singing together.

Keith’s reply came late and several words short. “Hey.”

“Did you get plenty of rest last night?” Shiro thinks about ending his message with “baby boy” but something feels off about it. It edges into uncertain dark space that hasn’t yet had its stars charted for navigation. There’s a thrill to it. Keeping things covered till after lights are dimmed and out. Something secret to save for whispering in the dark. Keith is too honest for Shiro.

“Not really? It was too hot and I just felt pissed off about nothing. I can’t wait for group later.” Keith had spent the night tossing and turning, one leg half under the top sheet and pillows thrown into the floor to join scattered pieces of clothing. His mind had been filled with dreams of black smoke he couldn’t find the source of until the sight of it pouring out of his own mouth like a deadly smog would cause him to jerk awake.

They text back and forth slowly through the day wedging little conversations in the small time slots they find between Shiro’s work and Keith’s studying. Shiro mentions the weather and Keith complains of vivid expletives about the wall of heat that bares down on him every time he’s forced to leave the house. It’s almost on a certain side of normal until the sun fades out of the sky in hazy vibrant pinks and oranges that go grey then dark navy.  
Keith leaves his bedside lamp on so that Shiro can watch him over the small rectangle of a phone screen. Even with the pixelation of slow internet connection, Shiro feels tethered to the deep blue of Keith’s half lidded eyes. The dark bruise colored space under said eyes weigh like sandbags that keep Shiro from floating off too high or too far from the surface of reality like a hot air balloon. He feels a desire to kiss them. To press his lips to Keith’s skin and sear himself on Keith’s soul unrepentantly.

Shiro’s brain does its best, offering up an endless list of pro’s and con’s for an also endless list of things he has little control over in truth.

“Hey, Keith.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I know we haven’t been talking that long and all but,” The words “I love you” stick in his throat like a powdery coated pill after an attempt to swallow it down dry. “Do you think you might want to visit? I mean I have some money saved up and I..” His second attempt is still unsuccessful. “I want to get to hold you and have you here. Really here.”

“Shiro..” He waits for Keith to reject him. To pull his face off like a mask to reveal a person Shiro does not know. Every second destroys his slim hopes a little more. “I don’t want you to spend your money on me.”

“I want to!” Shiro interjects before Keith can offer up his reasoning.

“Plane tickets are a lot of money though. And what if..” Keith sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, worrying at the already chewed up area of skin. _What if you regret it._ The look on his face squeezes Shiro’s lungs tight, a boa constrictor crushing him like prey.

“I don’t want to pressure you.” Shiro sees Keith’s eyes watching, moving around his own face. Sniffing like a fox hunting for a rabbit’s burrow in a search for clarity and answers. “But I think, no I know, I love you and I want to meet you. Please let me do this for you.”

_Please let me do this for you._ It’s a cruel thing disguised as a plea and Keith who is ever eager to please no matter how hard he might protest, kicking and dragging his feet in the mud to slow the progression of movement, cannot say no. “Okay. If you’re sure you want to spend your money like that.”

  
It’s enough of a “yes” that Shiro is caught up in the sound of his success like a stadium of people stomping in time to a song of victory. The way Keith doesn’t admit reciprocated feelings passes by, hidden under the cacophony of Shiro’s joy.

“Flights are usually cheaper a month in advance. Are there any days that aren’t gonna work?”

Keith thinks for a minute, pausing the video function of their call to check his phone calendar. “I’ve got a few class assignments due but I can just bring my laptop since their online classes.”

“Great!” Shiro’s smile is huge when Keith opens the video back up. “It’ll give you something to do while I’m at work too.”

Keith pulls anxiously at one of the longer pieces of his hair, wonders vaguely if he should get a haircut before they meet. It’s coupled with an urge to start packing immediately that hits him like he’s walked into the glass of a patio door.

“I can’t wait for you to be here.” The confession comes soft out of Shiro’s smile, still lit like glowing neon-lit sign after dark.

Keith finds himself agreeing, just as soft. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had such writers block for this chapter so i hope it doesn't suck as much as i feel like it does ahaha
> 
> COMMENT?? Kudo???  
> find me on Twitter @latchkeygrey ???


	4. in a sense, a sensation?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They meet! And they're in love! Also Allura is there because Shiro needs an anchor. A network of friends to support you is so important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Where did you go?  
> I looked away, and you were gone  
> You didn't say, where did you go?  
> I don't know
> 
> When you pull back, pull back far enough  
> We are only stones around the sun"
> 
> Stones Around The Sun - Lewis Watson

One month. Four weeks. Thirty-one days. Keith marks each passing day off with a diagonal line of fat red sharpie on a wall calendar that hangs up over the right side of his bed. He packs the Tuesday of the first week before he runs out of clean jeans and has to unpack. He knows it’s too soon anyway but the idea of forgetting something or being unprepared makes his palms itch and sweat. He also can’t stop tugging at his hair in a nervous habit. Shiro continues to call him daily. Sometimes in the afternoon as well as their regularly scheduled one each night.

His presence is like a warm, oversized coat, over Keith’s shoulders. Keeping his body at rest warm, as if it’s a November football game. Slightly snowy and cold enough that attendees can see the heated moisture of their own breath as it leaves their respiratory systems.  
Keith loses count of the number and variety of ways Lance prods to make sure that _Yes this is okay._ A frustrating, steep climb to assure his friend that he isn’t invalid. Only occasionally incapacitated. It doesn’t stop them from arguing about it.

“You barely even know this guy Keith! He could be catfishing you!” Small droplets of food fly from the wooden spoon Lance carelessly waves in the air over their food.and hit the stove top. A garish mess of red-orange chili powder and particles of browned ground beef. A color scheme over white paint that nauseates Keith.

“We video chat like everyday Lance.”

“But still! Just because he’s really hot, even coming in on your crappy cellphone screen,-”

Keith interrupts with a loud protest of “Hey!” but that doesn’t stop Lance from pressing forward.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not a serial killer or one of a hundred other things! Or more than one of them!” It’s not hard to see that Lance is just worried. Of course, he wants Keith, his friend, to be safe. That doesn’t make Keith stop wishing he’d lied to Lance and concocted a fake story about Shiro being a family friend or someone he’d met in person at least once before. A friend of a friend possibly, but it’s too late for minds to be changed in either part.

When Lance hugs him at the airport the next morning, Keith is expecting it but that doesn’t mean he’s ready for it. Lance is tan and warm and something absolutely solid and real in his arms and it makes Keith wish he was staying. More than the reasons that have been built up in his mind like level upon level of towering skyscraper. A building with each of its room housing an office for brain cells that do nothing but work to produce gurgling floods of anxiety and fear. A feeling of being up to your eyeballs in a pool he can’t swim his way out of.

“Text you when I land.” Keith keeps their hands clasped together as he offers his promise to Lance before Lance can ask it of him.

His nerves are thrown out like a net set to catch every small glance people give him. He can’t help the way bounces his leg in his bench seat at the terminal gate opposite to the one his flight leaves out of. Even with the look a mother gives him, one he can only see as judgemental, at the other end of the attached five seats. He pretends that he isn’t a nervous teenager traveling alone for the first time. He’s a professional of some artistic variety going home from a wildly successful trip. The scrawled out poetry he comes up with is something he actually doesn’t hate but his mind is in a tunnel that keeps objectivity in the dark.

Even without the blood rush nerves bring, the airport isn’t very cool. Keith can feel summer heat leaking in through the boarding bridge that shakes enough to scare him with every quick step he takes in his boots. He smiles, crooked and shy, at the two flight attendants that greet him in tandem. He’s entertaining himself with bad pun-y jokes in his head about “quaking in his boots” that are only funny because he forces it to be. The plane is hot from being a giant metal object sitting out under the hot sun. He chooses the window seat anyway and slides the shade up for a painful two seconds, all that it takes for bright light to assault his eyes.

Overeager. That’s how he feels as he buckles his seatbelt pre-instruction and tightens it despite the pressing need that’d been crushing his bladder since two hours ago. Too afraid to leave his small suitcase behind. Too afraid to be left behind after a missed flight. Shiro is counting on him to not mess this up. Keith considers getting up to pee before takeoff while the influx of people has slowed but he can’t find the steel in his legs to stand and walk that short distance to the space-toilet.

It gets cooler onboard, once the plane is in the air. He still feels a little too sweaty to not be grossed out. The lacy surprise he’d thought would make a “sexy” surprise under his boxers and jeans ends up feeling like an uncomfortable mistake. It’s wedged up farther than Keith thought could or would happen and is more like a damp string of regret digging into his ass. He convinces himself that it’s fine. He hadn’t really liked the color of the thong that much anyway.

Keith tries to close his eyes and doze but the shaky rocking of turbulence switches his mind back on into a live wire. He doubts he’s the only person that’s feeling nervous but other than a fussy newborn and one or two sets or people talking softly, the cabin is fairly quiet. Even the flight attendant, who comes by to collect people’s trash and ask individuals to raise their trays and seats, speaks low to each person. The relief when the plane lands is more felt than heard like the exhale of a soundless sigh. Around Keith, people are quickly swapping their phones off airplane mode despite not yet having a verbal go-ahead. Keith joins the crowd.

“If you see any hot flight attendants give them my number ;)” The first text is from Lance. The next two are from Shiro.

“Glad to hear you made it safe to the airport. <3” and “Let me know when you land so we can park the car. We’re waiting across the street to avoid airport parking fees.”

The implication of Shiro being not alone to pick up Keith is a gift bag of mixed emotions.

“Just landed.” Keith replies. “Waiting to disembark captain.” He can picture Shiro’s grin.

“That’s great Keith! I can’t believe you’re here? I could barely sleep.” Neither of them had. They’d stayed in a video call for hours and then texted until Shiro had pushed so adamantly for Keith to sleep at least a couple hours before his two-hour commute to the airport.

“You excited or something?”

“Gee idk ;P” Without a doubt, Shiro was a nerd and Keith knew while he stared at the reply that he liked it. _Yeah. This is where I’m supposed to be._

Fear stuck to him like sticky briars caught in sock fibers but more than that a sense of something, maybe a feeling purpose, wrapped his heart like vines and held him together as he walked. Off the plane, up the awful boarding ramp and through the entry ominously declaring “No Re-Entry.”

Keith saw Shiro before Shiro saw him. He was looking down at his phone when a woman, cool with the most perfectly dyed white hair Keith had even seen, tapped the taller man on the shoulder. She smiled, excited and mischievous, and pointed one slender finger right at Keith.

Keith watched the way Shiro’s eyes traced down her arm to her finger and followed the line of where she pointed until his eyes came to rest on Keith. Shiro blinked once as if he wasn’t really sure his brain was registering the sight of Keith correctly but then he was moving. Even steps didn’t conceal his obvious excitement, revealed in the way he’d forgotten his phone was still held in his hand with a text message, to Keith, mostly written but still unsent.

“Hi.” Shiro stood in front of him, waiting like a dog at the door at the sound of a key turning a lock.

Keith opened that door with his answer. “I made it.” He smiled and that was the end of the space between them. Shiro reached out and pulled Keith in harder than a planet with a cranked up gravitational pull. They stayed together like that, two pieces of bread being mashed into a doughy ball.

Allura smiled at them. “Should we stop and get food before driving home?”

Keith didn’t take his eyes off Shiro’s whole smile. “That would be.. Good. Yeah.”

Shiro spends the ride in his small silver car turned too far around to keep his eyes on Keith, making enthusiastic conversation. Allura chimes in occasionally, focused more intently on driving safely in the afternoon traffic. They make a stop at a burger joint Keith’s never even heard of before and he feels weirdly uncomfortable at the look Allura gives him after he’s ordered and Shiro’s paid. Shiro waves him to a booth they’ve taken up after Keith’s made his own private pit stop to the bathroom. He understands what had made Allura giggle after he’s passed a cheeseburger that’s as round as his face. The food really improves his mood, even if it doesn’t make him more talkative in front of Allura. He does let Shiro take pictures of him holding the burger and feeling like a big nerd. Shiro’s good enough to send him the picture so he can forward it to Lance.

“Nice face. Thanks for letting me know you’re not DEAD.” Lance texts him too fast to get a word in between messages. “And no couple pics?? You sure you’re gay?”

Keith rolls his eyes, turns backward as best he can between booth seat and table and takes a selfie that catches a fourth of his face and Shiro taking an enthusiastic bite of milkshake in the background.

“Better.” Lance sends with a few huffing and thumb up emojis. “Get a better one later you cryptid loving piece of shit.”

Keith just laughs and explains, “My friend just wanted to know if I’m having a good time.” to Allura and Shiro’s inquisitive faces. While Shiro beams at him, Keith can see a blocked off barrage of questions held in Allura’s expressions. He decides he likes her well enough to be more active in the conversation but he doesn’t miss her when they finally make it to Shiro’s apartment and go their separate ways.

“And this is the kitchen.” Shiro concludes the short tour of his small one-bedroom abode. “So what do you wanna do? Watch a movie?” It’s still early but they’re both typically homebodies.

“Actually can I take a shower?”

“Oh!” Shiro lifts Keith’s bag out of the living room floor as they head to the bedroom. “Here. Let me get you a fresh towel. Or do you want two?” He looks at Keith’s hair with a thoughtful glance.

Keith turns to his bag to dig out fresh clothes. “One is fine.” He’ll rub his hair till he deems it dry enough then wipe his body dry.

“Okay. Just pull the knob up and turn it to left. It takes a minute to heat so don’t turn it too far or you’ll burn yourself okay?” Shiro leaves Keith to it, shutting the bedroom door behind him to give Keith total privacy while he uses the attached bathroom’s shower.

Standing naked in the shower after stripping gratefully out of his dirty clothes, his disappointing underwear surprise most of all, Keith watches suds and water go down the drain and soaks in the bizarrity of his current situation. In some ways, it only feels like a dream. He grips his fist tight and hits the side of his thigh, waiting to see if he will wake up from this daze. Time passes the same way the water does, raining and pooling down the drain in lazy rivulettes till the faucet’s shut off and Keith re-emerges from behind plastic shower liner. Clean even if he doesn’t feel fresh. He finds Shiro on the couch after he’s redressed and curls up into his side, one of Shiro’s arms over his shoulder and they sit together silently under the noise of movies until the clock strikes midnight.

Keith doesn’t turn into a pumpkin or leave behind a glasses slipper but Shiro carries him to bed like Keith is treasure and his arm and wrist don’t hurt under the weight. They fall asleep together, layers of blankets over them with a heavy air conditioned chill making the bed pile cozy. Shiro sleeps a little less fitfully than usual and Keith sleeps like he’s never slept before in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Gabby who is MY anchor and literally amazing to me in too many ways for me to list. 
> 
> And a special thanks to Lee who read and liked my fic and gave awesome feedback? I rly appreciate all you put into fandom dude.
> 
> ANYWAYS  
> your comments are real important to me guys. so thank you.


	5. long fuse, fizzling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They keep falling in love but love is dangerous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I do not want to have you  
> To fill the empty parts of me  
> I want to be full on my own  
> I want to be so complete  
> I could light a whole city  
> And then  
> I want to have you  
> Cause the two of us combined  
> Could set it on fire.” - Rupi Kaur

“Slice, slice, baby.” Keith mumbles before pushing his fourth triangle of pizza into his mouth to bite down into. To consume it for the later use of fuel. Shiro had already been smiling just from a base point of happy that radiated from Keith doing the bare minimum of just existing on his couch. It’s the play on lyrics and sight of greasy tomato sauce oozing out onto Keith’s cheeks that do the job of adding it up to a percentage that tips the scale and sends laughter spilling over inside Shiro and leaving him in chuckles.

“You got something there on your face, Speedracer.” Shiro points to his own cheek, rolling his eyes when all Keith does is raise an eyebrow up to answer in question.

“Hold still.” Shiro huffs and tuts as he reaches to wipe Keith’s face clean with a rough brown paper napkin that contains a pre-saturated spot of pizza sourced grease. It brings up memories of the sounds Shiro’s mother would make at catching her two children yet again climbing countertops, like brave explorers at the foot of an icy mountain, to reach for heavy cups in high cabinets. He wonders if Keith can see the moment his brain disconnects from his body.

A small fraction of a second that leaves an odd gap in which Shiro does not exist as a person in a body but a concept of a creature that holds possession of a physical form that it does not understand nor remember the way it came into being as such. Shiro smiles anyway and crumples the napkin in his now sweating fist and fights the headache coming on his brain like the tidal wave after an earthquake.

A dangerous cross-continental split in the Earth’s crust. Devastation as an aftereffect of a millisecond long instance of destruction. It passes by Keith like a man who has slept through the evenings breaking news. Shiro loathes that he’s grateful. His resentment falls like steps on dry twigs. Crackling and leaving a trail of ache as it moves in a path over him despite his best intentions to step lightly. To be careful.

The way they crawl into bed together that night, in a room that has only one window with blinds and a flimsy transparent curtain covering it to soften the fall of orange streetlights, makes Shiro’s heart twist. The smear of burnt umber outside mixing with the phthalo blue coating of inside, blending so thick and messy into mud till Shiro feels like it’s clogging his throat.

He pulls Keith closer, swallowing down the mixture in the way he kisses Keith. If Shiro is a dying man then Keith is his final request for what he can have. His last supper, immortalized in soft and glowing oil paints.

“Shiro.,” Keith whispers his name into the room. “Takashi, come on.” He spurs Shiro on, digging a heel into the back of a thigh.

“You want me to?” Shiro has to know. Needs to hear the verbal reassurance. Have it out in the open, tangible and real for him to take and keep taking from Keith. He’s never felt so hungry in the presence of another person’s soul before. Flames spreading out over wood, no way to be extinguished till every bit is converted to ash and charred remains.

Keith pushes Shiro’s head down so that he doesn’t have to stretch and strain to fit their lips together. It’s the go-ahead that Keith punctuates after they’ve separated again.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want you.”

Shiro swears in that moment he can see an entire universe that is Keith. It’s a garden, messy with wild vines covering mossy and broken winding pathways stretching farther than the brain knows from what the eye sees.

Trees with branches so heavy in fruit that they sag. Waiting for the right hands to come and pluck what is presently and past prime, bringing relief. A gentle breeze carrying honey bees from blossom to blossom, contributing to the fragrant and bright future of both.

A place of life that is so far in contrast to Shiro’s own perceived self that it scares him how desperately he desires to find a place inside Keith forever.

It’s the second night Keith is there but it’s the first night they spend with bodies exposed and intertwined in a way of bare intimacy both physical and emotional. Shiro touches and kisses Keith so gently till Keith feels like he’s coming away like Mercury, melting at room temperature.There’s no containing the way he comes apart for Shiro, floating like droplets that roll across glass in the reverse of the direction gravity should take them.

It feels like love and romance when Shiro sucks marks at the base of his neck and backs of his shoulders. The slight ache and burn of where Shiro’s more agile fingers are inside him is a small price to exchange for the tender way Shiro covers him from behind, spare fingers tangled with Keith’s, both cupping his stomach.

It’s clumsy and scattered in the way new lovers can be with their touches and the way they move together. It’s still the best Keith’s ever felt with another person. With him facing down, Shiro doesn’t even hear the nagging voice that tells him to worry about how monstrous he must look naked. The only voice he can hear is Keith’s.

After, they both wriggle and shift to avoid the wet spot Keith had left behind on one side of the bed from Shiro pushing and holding him down in a way Keith liked much more than he felt comfortable admitting aloud.

“That was..” Keith tries.

“I’m in love with you.” Shiro pushes the words out, forcing them into a nosedive. “I love you so much.”

Keith brushes his thumbs over Shiro’s cheeks. Then his closed eyelids as well. He keeps wiping till the tears stop coming and slow to being like dew drops collected on Shiro’s long, long eyelashes. “Me too.”

It’s too long of a minute to be a literal count of sixty seconds but it feels that it took just that short of a time for Keith to know he’d go to the end of reality and back to find Shiro. He thinks of sunflower fields again and candle shrines, both in search of some bright warmth that cannot be touched with anything other than instinct and soul.

Keith pours his fear into a kiss to Shiro’s mouth. It’s terrifying. He’s so sure one day he will drown this light between them. Will snuff it out with his fear. He falls asleep after Shiro’s kisses have stopped and breathing has evened out.

One hand is drawn up to his chest and the other covers his face, turned on his side away from Shiro. He lets his own tears escape and shakes like an old car, ready for its engine to give at any mile.

Keith wakes up to a room that’s dim under lamplight and shifts till he can see Shiro sitting. Scratching of pen on paper gives enough of a clue to draw a conclusion the Shiro is writing.

“Morning.” Keith sits up in the bed, throat dry and leaving his voice croaking.

“Hey, good morning.” Shiro smiles and it’s so soft it jabs Keith like a left-hook to the jaw. Traitorous and unexpected yet somehow deserving. Keith can’t explain it. “You can go back to sleep. I’ve got work today and Allura’s almost here to pick me up.”

“Hm.” Keith settles back into the mess of pillows and blankets. “What are you writing? Is it for work?” He wants Shiro to keep talking for as long as possible. It’s his hope to fall asleep to Shiro’s voice and miss the aching moment when he’ll leave Keith behind and step from the cozy apartment and into the so-called real world.

“Just my journal. I try to write every day but..” Keith watches Shiro’s cheeks go red like a sunset. “I didn’t have a chance to yesterday.” That makes Keith blush too. Each glance at the other, breaking smiles out on both their faces and suddenly they’re staring at each other. Grinning like a pair of lovestruck fools on honeymoon.

Keith lowers his head to pillows, eyes soft. His expression reminds Shiro of eating freshly baked bread, with its warmth and melt in your mouth consistency. Shiro would make a meal out of Keith’s love for the rest of his given time.

A knock on the door breaks the magic spell.

“Shiro! Come on! We’ll be late if we don’t hurry!”

“Ah.” Shiro hurries to store his journal in a dresser drawer that is locked. “I’ll call you on my lunch break. I love you.” He kisses Keith goodbye, grinning and shaking his head when Keith holds his tie in a lingering way. “See you later babe.”

Keith doesn’t get up from the bed to see him go out the door. He hears Shiro’s key turn the lock, securing him behind the door and feels a hole open up inside himself. He eyes the locked drawer that holds Shiro’s journal and sinks further till black overtakes. Keith lets his eyes close and sleeps. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was like.. 400 words shorter than my usual chapter goal but it's harder to update rn, being so busy... but S3 was so good so.. I had to..
> 
> comment??? kudo???  
> love shieth????


	6. a ghost (after dark)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith swirls pensively, caught like a sideways hourglass.

Keith wakes in Shiro’s sheets to a bedroom that’s empty but for chilly afternoon air. 

The coffee left behind by Shiro for him is now hours cold, oils separated and sitting on top. Keith flips the switch back to its “On” position regardless, squaring off in a staring match with a little alien on a mug declaring itself “Not A Morning Person”.

Understanding the fact that the little cartoon creature cannot close its eyes, Keith silently declares a tie and leaves the coffee to reheat while he showers in an attempt to calm the unbrushable mess of tangles his hair has become in between shower, sex, and sleep. 

Even if he had wanted to only brush it, which he didn’t, he doesn’t own a brush or even a comb. Not mentioning that digging through Shiro’s things would be too much, too soon. Undoubtedly an act of invasive and rude. Again, Keith’s mind wanders to the locked draw hiding a notebook full of secrets. If communication was the most important thing, then it seemed fair in a pretend sort of way that Keith learns what words lived in the notebook.   

The bathroom also seems to hold secrets inside, under the glow of a dim yellow bulb. Keith washes slow, inspecting his arms and legs under a chilled spray of water, behind a white shower curtain that looks cream in the light. 

The combination of low lighting and water droplets clinging to his skin make his legs seem tanner than they had before just minutes ago. A need to exfoliate taps into his mind as unrelenting urge. 

He settles for washing each part of his body till the number reaches three. A triangle of unity and perfection that seems to settle the waves crashing in his gut. Only his hair makes it through the ordeal safe from his compulsion, receiving only conditioner out of fear the strands might snap and partially abandon him.   

He feels marginally warmer once finished, sitting on Shiro’s bed in a towel and socks with hair still damp but not dripping. He can smell the coffee now in the kitchen and the faint scent of his own deodorant. Knows that he should get up and eat but he sits there, touching leg hairs. Guilty and inwardly scolding himself for feeling the urge to pull out the course little black things. He has Shiro. He shouldn’t need this kind of comfort any more.   

He finds boxers in his unpacked duffel to put on, along with one of Shiro’s hoodies. It’s grey and the inside is pilled up like it used to be soft fleece years ago and went through the dryer one to many times. Somehow it feels still warm and smells the same as Shiro. Citrus and musk.  <

Keith pulls the hood up over his head and tightens the strings till just his eyes are left exposed. He takes small breathes as if believing that by breathing too much he will somehow inhale all of Shiro’s scent. He only gives it up once he’s finally made his coffee and taken it out sliding glass doors to sip it out on Shiro’s balcony. 

Outside provides a bleak view of grey sky, grey pavement and grey-brown mulch broken up by sturdy yellow-white grass with a sparse number of small trees in sections indicated by small worn down concrete barriers in the parking lot below. It does its best to leave him lonely and wondering if the whole city lacks green life. 

Logically, he knows it must be true that concrete, pavement, and metal have spread across the area like the slow crawling spread of a parasitic plant-killer. He sits in the single dirty, white plastic chair of Shiro’s balcony, just picturing the dilapidated remains of his uncle’s home till his body begs retreat from the chilly air. His fingers and toes offer the largest amount of protest to the cold even with the oversized hoodie on to swallow him up.  

Thoughts whisper nonsensical things in his mind like ghosts trapped in warped memories of things not quite completely forgotten. He gives up on the chilled outside setting to crawl back into Shiro's bed. Coffee set to the side, his hand slides around under blankets and pillows on the hunt for his phone.   

It’s low on battery and holding three text messages, one from Lance checking in and two from Shiro. Keith lays there and instead of answering either, he pulls up solitaire on his phone so he can think as he plays. It’s unintentional but he instead plays till he falls back to a grey, dreamless sleep.  

He wishes it were hands smoothing his hair back and out of his face or the soft brush of Shiro’s thumb that woke him. Instead, it is the vibration of his phone alerting him to a missed call that startles him conscious with uncomfortably gritted teeth and muscles tightened beyond any point of comfortable. A glance at the screen lets him know that about only a half an hour has ticked by since he dozed off. The call, from an unknown number and with no voicemail left behind, he gathers is spam.   

He contemplates another shower to fix the tangled wavy mess his hair became during his nap but only lays under the sheets. Waiting for something to fall into place begins to feel like a merry-go-round. Turning and turning but moving nowhere other than the same circle. He knows eventually Shiro will come back to his own apartment where Keith is but moving feels like aching effort. Rather, Keith continues to lie still, daydreaming grey fog and not much else.  

Old feelings crawl like spiders out of dusty corners, small pinpricks of a touch over skin that lead into a full body shiver.

“I miss you..” He says it to the open air, wondering if he is not only thinking but being thought of. 

His hand stretches up towards the ceiling as if he is reaching so far out into the universe he could grasp a star in the outstretched palm of one hand, then tries the spell again.   

“Come home, Shiro. Come home now.” The universe turns no faster and no one, not even spiders, come out to answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.. This chapter has been a long time coming. I just didn't know where I was at with the story or where I was going which is why it's a little bit shorter than the usual. But I want Keith to be found. Yeah.
> 
>  
> 
> [me on twitter](https://twitter.com/ghostlypng)


	7. simple syrup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ahh lil shorter upload this time but wow.. 2nd to last chapter.. i'm sad.

That night, Shiro watches Keith mouth and suck at frozen strawberries. Phantom ache happens at the sight and sounds of scraping teeth digging into the fruit he’d refused to let Shiro thaw. A thin string of saliva hits Keith’s chin and Shiro can’t stop himself from splintering like dried bamboo.

The roof of Keith’s mouth is cold against Shiro’s tongue. Inside the taste is an unpleasant mix of strong coffee with two teaspoons of sugar and homegrown strawberries given to him by his friend’s insistent mother. The way she still pictured him to be a growing teenage boy wasn’t sexy but it gave a certain confidence.

A knowledge that he was impressive as is and still worthy of garnering attention. He pressed closer to Keith, hand getting caught and tangled between faded sweater and soft cotton t-shirt in the effort to get under both layers.

“Shiro.,” Keith whispers his name up like a sacred prayer.

“Mm.. Baby..” Shiro doesn’t return the favor of real name, chipping at Keith’s heart unpleasantly with an ice pick made with the sharp letters of a pet name. It’s a contrast to the way Shiro feels.

He’s on fire, reckless in the seat of a motorbike, steering a direct path into a brick wall. He pushes Keith down into the couch cushions, hands still fumbling fabric but pushing that away as well.

Each action follows a same pattern, white lines racing by like morse code, Shiro pushing his way into Keith’s mouth and body. Movements that dare the other man to try and make words before Shiro can preemptively devour them. Soundless and gone without time for them to even be birthed into the open air of the room.

Watery strawberry juice leaks out of opened resealable bag and onto Shiro’s coffee table beside them. It pools there slowly, the only witness to the way Shiro covers Keith as if he wants to merge their bodies together more than just where they are joined.

There’s a certain reverence in the way Shiro traces carefully over and around tender places of skin. A delicate admiration that has more place in a museum than over muscle and in the creases of Keith’s joints. It’s over too sweetly and too soon to make anyone but Shiro satisfied, leaving Keith in the care of his own hand.

Feelings he can’t decipher burn brightly in his lungs, still with no give for anything to escape. The sticky strawberry liquid rolls, dripping down onto the carpet while Keith watches. Panting with a mouth stained red and kissed swollen, smothered under a body too long for the couch and a face pressing soft kisses onto throat and bitten collarbone.

Much like the couch, Shiro’s tub is too small for the both of them to comfortably settle into afterward so they compromise for it by showering together till the hot water turns cooler than lukewarm.

Keith leans back onto Shiro’s shoulder after the water is finally heated, letting Shiro massage circles into his scalp soothingly.

“How’d you get so good at this..” Keith grunts, trying not to become too relaxed as he stands on slippery soaped porcelain. Still, he lets go some. Hoping to forget some worries and his need to demand something of Shiro’s heart.

“My grandfather used to wash my hair this way when I was a kid.” Is the soft reply. “He had a big traditional type of bathroom.”

“Oh?” Keith wants to ask more than a word. Instead, he follows Shiro’s hand gently guiding from where it’s wrapped around the back of his neck, under the shower spray and lets his hair be rinsed.

Water runs in tracks over his face, clinging to his lashes and trying to get past his tightly shut eyelids. The sensation feels reminiscent of crying. He cracks an eye at the thought and too soon, as shampoo stings his eye and leaves it burning even as he seals it tightly closed again.

When he’s finally looking back at Shiro again, eyes red and irritated, the word “Beautiful.” being mouthed at him like it’s a secret between them. It should burn in his stomach and down into his guts but it doesn’t. Instead, his insides churn like a vicious, muted grey sea while crows circle with spirits on their backs. In the fog surrounding it all, Keith cannot find the land. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do you think? is Shiro a cowardly lion? or is it Keith?  
> Did they break your heart yet? Cause mine certainly is haha. Or maybe reading this was regret? 
> 
> Also they left behind simple syrup mess which gave me the idea for this chapter's title aha.


	8. clipped buds for new blooms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It feels like the end, but really it's the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And every time I think of you I'm so glad  
> What we had they'll never know  
> And every summer night we stayed up late  
> Blowing smoke into figure eights
> 
> \- Bye-Bye Darling, Børns
> 
> (some author comments @ the end)

“Hey buddy! So how was it??” Lance greets Keith with his usual enthusiasm, perfectly white and toothy grin to match. “Best, longest date of your life eh??”

The teeth disappear into a gap of long seconds that Keith’s silence stretches around, around, around and covers.

“Keith? Buddy?”

Arms reach out to hold but Keith feels just a numbness. It spans from his fingertips through veins, meeting in his chest.

He contemplates every moment he ever found himself feeling alone and compares it to the current, a hollowing pain that marks out a bullseye dead center.

“Did something happen..?” Lance’s mind skips through the worst of scenarios like a cheap cd player. Repetitive and distorted. “Did he do something to you!?”

“No, I…” Explanation dries in Keith’s throat. “I fucked it all up.” Tanzanite eyes meet a sapphire gaze.

He rovers over memories of the recently past days, unable to pinpoint the exact when and moment of how things had changed so irrevocably.

Waking up next to another person could be odd. For Keith, it felt like walking down the street and being handed a bar of gold. Slowly coming aware of the realization Shiro had him wrapped in his arms. His undamaged tucked in under the slight dip of Keith’s waist while the other was draped loosely over his hip.

A sight that made Keith want to kiss the tip of each of Shiro’s fingers like one might kiss the ring of their reigning lord. He settled for tracing patterns over skin with corded muscle underneath.

It soaked in like milk into bread, a wave of knowing he’s totally in love and royally fucked.

In contrast, Shiro wakes up alone. Noticing first the smell of coffee and secondly the sounds of water running through hidden pipes.

The bathroom is tiny from tight apartment spacing so there’s no missing the opening of the door.

“Hey, it’s just me. Good morning.” Shiro calls voice still rough after rest, mostly talking to the shower curtain. “How’d you sleep?”

It’s strange to Keith that they’re having this conversation in the bathroom while he shaves under hot, steamy shower and Shiro empties his bladder.

The ease is like a double-jointedness he’d never known but was comfortable with the second he did.

“Was fine. You’re warm and clingy. I think I lost a layer of skin on my arm from being stuck to you.” Keith jokes.

“Yeah well,” Shiro remembers at last second not to flush or Keith will burn. “I just..”

He knows Keith is joking but his chest thuds, hurting and forces his mind to justify action and reaction.

“Guess I’m just a cuddler..”

“A bear of a boyfriend. Should I worry you’ll eat me?” Silence meets Keith’s continued teasing, broken when Shiro steps in and joins him, naked, in the shower.

“Problem?” Karma rounded back on Keith, pointing right through him as his face turned the color of muted blood.

“No! I mean, I just, it’s, y-know..” He searched for the right words, prowling his mind like a housecat mouse-hunting in a garden. “Don’t you get, I don’t know..”

“Embarrassed?”

Keith shakes his head no.

“Concerned with my attraction to you?”

This time Keith shrugs and Shiro can see it for what it is. A hesitant affection, a bloom not yet fully open to outside view. Fear.

“I hadn’t planned for any of this,” Shiro confessed, though that was no deep secret. “For a long time, I thought I was just broken. Too broken to be in love again. Everything just feels... Really empty without you.”

His smile made Keith ache, a sun leaving burnt out rings behind in his retinas.

“I’m sorry.”

Shiro’s face turns a touched panicked, the rest hidden under layers of practiced casual worry. “What do you mean?”

“I hate that it took me so long to find you.” Superheroes weren’t real, and regardless Shiro was bigger than Keith, but he wanted to pull Shiro inside himself. To be his armor, his shield, and his sword.

“Hey, that’s not anything you can control. Whatever happened has happened and it led me to you. So I’m grateful.”

Keith bit his lip, eyes closed, and leaned into the palm Shiro had assigned to cupping his cheek with careful pressure.

He holds back on his tears and thoughts of how it just isn’t fair, afraid the fissure will crack and leave all his love pouring out. The tide stems and lets him pull back to the reality of how they’re both naked in Shiro’s shower.

He lets Shiro bring their mouths to meet once, twice and then he’s putting a hand to his chest, admiring as much as he isn’t. “Coffee’s gonna be burnt by the time when we get to it.”

“Depends on how long we take in here.”

“Not too long, we’re meeting your friends to hang out later.”

Shiro wants to protest but he lets Keith finish his minimal washing routine before he takes over the whole space, alone, and starts his which requires a little more time.

With most of the hot water gone, Shiro adjusts the water's temperature till it’s just barely warm. He washes slow, scrubbing over skin in circular motions with a lathered up sponge.

He pays extra attention to the worst of his scars, trying to encourage them to fade faster. Rinsing goes slowly for a different matter, finger getting caught tracing over a scar on his left pec.

It’s a thin white one, not quite an inch long and from before his accident. He remembers being young and holding a cat from his childhood too tightly, despite that his mother had warned against it.

Sharp claws had left the lesson of just the way some things can’t be forced. For a moment after his chest feels tight and his knees wobbly but he pushes it away and finishes his shower shortly, moving a little more motivated to be dressed than before.

Shiro’s friends have a lot of questions for Keith that evening.

“What’s your major?”

“Isn't this song great?”

“Have you been to our state before?”

“You know he talks nonstop about you, right?”

Shiro smiles, bashful yet agreeable as Keith takes it all in stride. Mainly getting caught in a conversation about their shared appreciation for math.

They ask about where he lives, if his roommate is good. More typical questions that are followed up with chatter about themselves and things like books and movies. They welcome Keith into the fold so easily it feels fake but he hangs on to the feeling regardless.

After, when it’s just the two of them again, it’s back on Shiro’s couch. Cuddled up while a movie plays.

“Your friends are nice.”

“I’m glad you had a good time, they all really liked you.”

“Next time, when you visit me, you can meet my roommate. He’s basically a friend.” It’s another joke just by the tone of it and like before, Shiro doesn't tease back.

He only hums with “Maybe.” rolling off his tongue. It cuts like cardboard under fingernail, stinging far past the length of the movie.

The both of them put off going to bed till Keith is yawning and Shiro’s head is too heavy for his shoulders. Even under the sheets, they fight sleep. Neither feels good about the coming day because it means parting.

The sun rises without them joining, too busy clinging to one another and pretending as if neither feels an urge to cry.

“We shouldn't waste the whole day in bed..” Shiro mumbles.

“It’s not a waste.” Keith leans in to kiss both Shiro’s cheeks and chin. “Life was different without you.” He says it with all the conviction of a man soft in love.

The surface tension holding Shiro above water breaks with him falling to the bottom.

“Shiro, what did I say? I’m sorry!” Keith panics a little, hands moving to cradle Shiro’s face between them tenderly. “Please,” He lands a flurry of soft kisses to Shiro’s cheeks, not minding the salted wet skin. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m- It’s not- I miss you already.” Shiro whispers as if Keith might break too. He isn't wrong.

They lay tight together, wishing for time to stand still. Even for a second. Missing moments as they give into the craving of wanting one day more.

The mood is somber, heavy enough that Allura feels it when she steps into the apartment. Both men having showered, together, and dressed and Keith already packed as if they had anticipated her early arrival.

Keith is stuck lonely in the back seat again, parallel to his arrival but feeling a thousand degrees colder inside.

Keith considers the quiet stop they’d made for food, only blocks away from the airport. The way he’d needed the bathroom so quickly from the way his guts rioted and churned, just after he’d boarded his flight.

After Shiro had professed love one more time, wetting the collar of Keith’s second most comfortable shirt with more aching tears.

After Keith had passed through security and could no longer see Shiro’ retreating back with Allura’s hand resting on one shoulder to guide him away.

Keith thinks it all over and bites his lip. “I think I gave him everything I had.”

Lance watches Keith’s thumb travel back and forth, pressing hard on the fingers of his closed fist. It’s fear, long ingrained after time and time again of feeling abandonment.

“Hey, buddy, it's gonna be okay, right?” He can see Keith is not convinced.

Talking Keith down has never been from at such an angle and Lance finds it unnerving. He wishes he knew better what to do than to keep his mouth running.

Yet that’s all he thinks he knows to do. He fills the space Keith won’t take, catching him up on the highlights of his roommate-free week. It even earns him a few slender, wobbling smiles which he tallies towards victory.

Lance takes a last shot before bed. “You’re way stronger than you think Keith. It’s kinda why I always, well, looked up to you. So don’t just give up and try to burn yourself up. Give it some time y’know?”

Sunlight blooms somewhere in the dark garden of Keith’s soul.

“I- Yeah. Thanks, Lance.”

Lance wishes him goodnight with a wink and finger guns, sliding things back into the placeholder of normal.

Body flat to the bed and eyes on a ceiling he can’t see in the dark of his room, Keith wonders at the calm he feels.

His phone lights up in the yellow-orange of night mode colors, neither sound nor vibration disturbing the air.

"I miss you."

Keith looks at the confession on his phone screen again and again. He waits much too long, much too late but 3 AM makes him brave enough to hit send.

"I miss you too. Come back to me."

Suddenly, things feel like they could turn out much more okay than they ever have before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woah woah woah you guys!! tysm for all the feedback, from kudos to comments to messages about this fic. I'm way past flattered and thankful for each and every thing!   
> Starting this, I really didn't have plans except to vent through writing but the encouragement I got from you guys just really really has felt incredible. 
> 
> Thank you for reading this, truly. 
> 
> I have tentative plans outlined for an epilogue to this so lmk if there is any interest in that! And as always, you can find me on twitter @ghostlypng (consistent branding!!)


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